Microsoft released yet another pre-beta 2 build of WinXP last night, but from the sound of it this one - build 2458 - is largely a last minute reality check before the company makes the beta 2 release next week. The scheduled date for beta 2 has been pushed back from the beginning of this month to March 21st.

AMD's Mobile Athlon, based on the Palomino core, may be sampling and volume shipments may be due to commence on Monday, but don't expect to buy a big-name notebook containing the power-conserving processor for some time yet.

Aimster may have knocked its Napster filter bypass software, Pig Encoder, on the head, but the void it has left behind it is rapidly being filled. The latest is Catnap, an open source scrambler/descrambler that's almost completely transparent to the user.

The Canadian Government appears to have joined the list of countries that have misunderstood the Internet and hurled out ill-fitting legislation to deal with the worst manifestations of the Net revolution.

Californians Michael Persaud, 24, of San Diego and Frank Kriticos, 25, of Santee will answer felony criminal charges of spamming and so earn the distinction of being the first people so charged in that state, according to a story in the local Union Tribune newspaper.

The Government is to conduct the UK's first secure mobile electronic signature trial in a scheme that will go some way to proving whether mobile mcommerce is a viable business proposition, or just the latest fad.

Updated againYou'll be used to breast enlargements/reductions, people, empty PlayStation2 boxes and the like being available to bid for on eBay, but things have taken a strange turn of late. Call it imaginative, deranged or indicative of some wider social problem but people have gone into offering specialised and frankly bizarre services. Below is one of our favourites so far.

Micron, America's third biggest direct-selling PC maker, is to flog computers in a furniture store. One furniture store. In Nebraska. Granted, Nebraska Furniture Mart is the world's biggest furniture store, with 450,000sq ft of retail space, and it is a destination shopping place for hundreds of miles around. And isn't it owned by Berkshire Hathaway, the investment vehicle of the Sage of Omaha, Warren Buffet?